


Pygmalion

by Anonymous



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Consent Issues, Manipulation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 18:24:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4232112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things haven't always turned out the way Cam would have liked, but that doesn't mean he did anything without a reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pygmalion

**Author's Note:**

> just a dark little bit of catharsis. more to come. comments appreciated.

He's not a monster. He tries his best to be a good family man, he gives to charity, he works hard at his job. He's built fulfilling, mutually respectful relationships with the leaders on the Bruins roster, and done his best to make sure a captain and alternates were in place who showed good character and made things run smoothly on and off the ice.

He's human, that's all, and maybe he took to some of the perks of his job a little too much. Who hasn't, though? God knows what people in anonymous office jobs across the world get away with every day.

He tries to be reflective and realistically self-critical - always did as a player, even when the whole city could find no fault with him. He tries to keep that same perspective now - it's still just as important, it's still on his shoulders to make the best difference he can for his team, even if he's not out on the ice anymore. He can't be expected to remake the organization in the image of the sort of values he thinks are worth preaching, but he does what he can with respect for tradition and loyalty to the players who've earned it. Old Man Jacobs would tear down the Orr statue at the Garden and replace it with Viagra banners if he thought it'd pay for another new Jaguar or two, but that doesn't mean Cam has to let things be like that. Hell, he couldn't stand by and let Jacobs penny-pinch his way to years of mediocrity, no matter how much Jacobs was paying. The Bruins matter to him too much.

They've mattered so much to him for so long, and of course it never stopped hurting that they'd never quite made their way to the Cup before his body failed him. Rationally he knows he did the best he could under the circumstances. Sometimes destiny just doesn't line up the way you want it, your body won't do what you need it to no matter how hard you try, and there aren't enough victories to go around for everybody who thinks they deserve one. Knowing those things never made the hole go away. Getting to raise the Cup in 2011 is probably the closest he'll ever come to being able to fill it. There was a real, sincere camaraderie formed between everyone on that team when they got to raise the Cup that day, and Cam thinks that bond will always be there. That attachment, that fondness still springs to mind when he thinks of anyone on that roster and that management team.

Of course, things haven't always gone quite right between him and some of them since - but that doesn't diminish the victory, or extinguish the feeling he has for them as they were in 2011, when everything was just right. It's hard for Cam to see how anyone on that roster should have much to complain about after that. Winning the Cup in Boston should make up for a whole lot of things.

Naturally, some things have happened that Cam regrets, and he's sure some of his former players and colleagues feel the same about it. People may not always turn out quite how you like them to, but Cam has faith in his judgment of character, and he wouldn't have trusted or relied on anyone who didn't want what was best for the team. A bit more of that hole opened up whenever he had to let one of them go, but these things happen and you have to keep going.

Sometimes you have to make more compromises than you'd like. Today was as hard for him as it was for anyone else, and he's willing to accept his portion of responsibility for all of it. Winning as the president of the Boston Bruins might not quite compare to raising the Cup as a player, but it was a close second and the next best thing. Maybe he lost control of a few bits of himself after that. Looking back, some of the hurt of never winning it on the ice himself got mixed with the rush of finally being on top of the league, and maybe he took some of the urges that came out of that out on the wrong people. He wasn't invincible, not everything he'd tried had worked out just right, and the Bruins had some things to bounce back from now. He thinks he did what he could with the circumstances most of the time, but maybe things would have gone more smoothly if he'd been satisfied with a little less.

He'll have to send a card or two over to LA in the next few months, choose the right picture or two to put inside it. He wants the times they had together to stay fresh in Milan's mind.

Had he let his own vanity carry him away? Maybe a little. It felt too good to be idolized, to know he could let himself go and do what he wanted. Milan was wide-eyed and nice to look at when he was nineteen, but that shouldn't have been enough on its own to make everything happen. It felt so good to shape things that he'd missed the point where he should have stopped pushing.

Cam has shown admirable restraint in his life, over and over again. While he was playing, he watched people do things that would probably get them sent to jail these days, and already weren't good ideas at the time - just because they wanted to get off and couldn't stand to wait for the right time and place. Cam is no stranger to a dark impulse or two, but he always had more sense than that.

That isn't to say he didn't take advantage of the windows of opportunity he had. Any man with an executive position who hasn't wanted to bend a good-looking young thing over his desk now and again is lying to himself. It's always too bad when those arrangements can't last forever, but he doesn't see the sense in wasting much time on regrets. He makes sure to stay away from the manipulative, careerist ones who would try to get more ice time or an extra few hundred thousand out of the arrangement. There's never much fun in a transaction. That was probably just what Jeremy Jacobs was like at their age, too, and that is not the image Cam likes to have when he's getting his cock sucked.

Then there are the ones who don't know who to mince their words to, who wouldn't have the natural caution or sense of shame to keep things their little secret. That isn't to say he doesn't like them just as much - they're often just the right sort of players who'll earn themselves letters, the sort of reliable character guys who their teammates know they can turn to. He isn't perfect, but he knows who's safer to admire from afar.

Your Patrice Bergeron (or, of course, your Andrew Ference) might not raise his voice very much, but you can't count on being able to shut his mouth when he decides something needs to be said. Cam can't be dealing with that. When he plays his cards right, they can take care of the team and be none the wiser - nothing should happen that means anyone has to be moved in a hurry. And he can have his fun.

It works most of the time. He hasn't lost faith in the system - but somewhere along the way things got more complicated than they needed to be. He's done a lot of thinking to find the turning point where things started to spiral. Looking back, he regrets telling Milan he'd have a letter in five years. He's pretty sure Milan confided that in Claude at some point - he can picture it, Milan overeager and earnest and wanting to know what he had to do to get the responsibilities the team needed him to have. Milan had been brimming with a naive drive to do as much work as he possibly could then, second round pick suddenly finding himself in the NHL before anyone expected and not knowing what to do but keep doing the work that got him there. He was desperate to learn, and not asking too many questions about whether people wanted him to learn things that were good for him. Cam couldn't have asked for anything better.

It hadn't occurred to him to tell Milan to keep his mouth shut. Hell, he'd believed it wholeheartedly himself at the time - it was too easy to imagine himself guiding Milan through the sort of starry career path Cam wishes he'd had the chance to have. They were too much alike at the same age for Cam not to get a little carried away.

But Claude had probably known what Cam had said, and he wouldn't have thought twice about mentioning it to Peter. Claude had never hesitated to tell Peter what he was thinking about a player. He was a straightforward, guileless soul, Claude, who'd never wanted to deal with any more politics than he had to. Cam likes having that kind of person at the helm of the coaching staff. It's refreshing not to deal with any more scheming bullshit than he has to - and honest people have a wonderful way of assuming everyone else is like them. Claude is a solid problem-solver, to be sure - but once he's hit on a plausible picture of things that makes sense to him, it never occurs to him that it might be a smokescreen. Claude is a pleasure to work with, and Cam had been quick to put a stop to Don's ideas about replacing him. Circumstances are too tight for Cam to be able to suppress all the silly bullshit Don feels like doing now that he has the job he wanted. But he'd put his foot down about holding onto Claude. Cam's had easier years, but life isn't about to stop for you when you make a mistake.


End file.
